2 Pit bulls kill 3-year-old

A three-year-old Holmes County child is dead, after a pit bull attack. It happened in the community of Thornton which is south of Tchula.

The boy has been identified as Christopher Malone.

Our news crew was the first to arrive on the scene when this happened just after 4:00p.m. Monday.

Family members say the dogs were secured in a dog pen behind the home but some how broke out and attacked Malone.

"The dog just jumped him and took him down and drugged him in the back and killed him, ate him up," said Lucy Mayze, an aunt of the victim.

Sheriff deputies say Malone's mother tried to save him,

"The children were outside playing and she missed her child and when she went around to look for him that's when she saw the dogs on him and she went up there to try to get the dogs off her child and she ended up getting bit too," said Captain Sam Chambers with the Holmes County Sheriff's Department.

The dogs were taken in by animal control. It's not clear what is going to happen to them.

Family members say the dogs have never attacked anyone before.

"They never been no real viscous dog they never bit nobody they never jumped on nobody around here," said Mayze.

Cousins of the victim say they just lost a grandma in a house fire two months ago, so you can imagine the pain they are feeling.